Short Film Showcase: The Sandman

1992
Dir. Paul Berry

A young boy who stays up past his bedtime receives a nasty visit from the sinister Sandman…

The usual notion of the Sandman as a benevolent character from European folklore who sprinkled 'sleeping' dust into children’s' eyes to send them to sleep, is darkly subverted in this beautifully realised and highly stylised animated short. The filmmakers have instead opted to base their titular character on a menacing creature that brings horror and suffering to children inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann's novella The Sandman. Hoffmann’s richly textured and harrowing tale abounds with psychoanalytical readings such as the Jungian notion that sleep equals a denial of life, therefore the state of unconsciousness is an invitation to death.

Berry clearly draws influence from early Expressionist classics like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, M and Nosferatu to create a dark and anxiety-ridden atmosphere, awash with nightmarish colours and a distinctly gothic feel. The look of The Sandman is quite similar to several Tim Burton animations such as A Nightmare Before Christmas (a film Berry would later work on) and Vincent, and the characters have that same slightly startled and sad expression on their faces. The creepy music and eerie, bloodcurdling sound effects add to the sinister atmosphere, while Berry's use of lighting to create startling shadows and pools of glowing light is also highly effective. The Sandman is a cold and upsetting story - the little boy’s mother seems unsympathetic to his plight and her actions of returning him to his bed ultimately seals his dark fate.




The Sandman himself is a truly haunting spectre, with a twisted, crescent-moon face, huge piercing, beady eyes and a fierce, beaklike nose. His movements, while wonderfully theatrical, are also distinctly spidery, as he looms up out of the darkness like some unspeakable thing of the night and skulks between the shadows waiting to pounce. He is a sadistic predator, toying with his prey. The final moments of this cat and mouse game result in the unveiling of the little boy’s shocking fate and the final image is a haunting one, tinged with sadness and guaranteed to upset.

The Sandman was nominated for an Oscar in 1992. Berry would go on to work on James and the Giant Peach as an animation supervisor and on Monkeybone as supervising animator. He sadly passed away on June 26, 2001 due to a brain tumour. He was only 40 years old.

Click here to check it out 

Pleasant nightmares...

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo
Read more

Otherworldly Encounters on Halloween

Image
Oíche Shamhna shona duit. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, my dear friend Marie – a writer and folklorist based in Missouri - has put together a podcast exploring first-hand paranormal experiences that took place on Halloween. The stories and accounts are shared from r/Paranormal , The Fairy Census , and the Dúchas Schools Collection (part of the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project).  Between the stories, one of which is read by yours truly, Marie explores some of the history and folklore surrounding the traditions of Halloween, or Samhein, as it was known in Ireland where it originates from. An important festival in the ancient Celtic calendar to mark the end of summer, Samhein (Irish for November), is the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes thinnest, allowing souls of the deceased to pass through into our world and roam freely. The night we call Halloween in English, is Oíche Shamhna: literally Samhain (November) Eve. To listen t
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from civili
Read more